The lead singer of the 1960s soul rock group The Chambers Brothers is barely surviving on his meager income, even though his voice has appeared on hundreds of albums, movies, TV shows and commercials.

While musicians have penchant for squandering their money on luxuries or drug addictions, 72-year-old Lester Chambers is living in poverty because of an exploitative contract he signed decades ago. He claims he received no money in royalties between 1967 and 1994.

“When you’re a young group, you listen to people say: ‘We’re going to make it better,’” he told Vice magazine. “And that never works, because if they were going to make it better they woulda made it better. Young musicians are still caught in the same situation ‘cos they wanna be heard.”

“God knows, The Chambers Brothers were not the only ones. And some of them have come forward and some of them haven’t. When you’re told: ‘Go get a lawyer,’ and they know upfront that you really can’t afford a big business lawyer to do this for you, you’re caught between first and second base.”

After writing letters and making phone calls to record companies for years, Chambers and his wife put their complaint online.

Imitating the online postings of supporter of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, Chambers uploaded an photograph to the Internet, holding one of his Gold Records in front of his face and declaring that “Only the 1% of artists can afford to sue. I am the 99%.”

Eccentrics are hard to find in our over-medicated, over psychopathologized plastic fantastic world of consumerbots.

In the Fifties there was a character in New York known as Moon Dog, long flowing hair, Viking helmet and spear, like a supernumerary from a Wagner Opera.

Today he would be taken down by Homeland Security as a terrorist threat, hospitalized and forcibly medicated as a threat to the credit spending tourists and consumerbots.

San Francisco had its legendary Emperor Norton during the early 20th century.

We’ve plasticized the world to the point where it is a homogenized mix of corporate outlets, the same stores with the same facades and logos. We’ve abandoned the cities that had individual character for the ersatz world of shopping malls.

We are afraid of people who are different be they bikers, gays, lesbians, hippies, transsexuals, transgenders, transvestites, vegan,atheists or bicyclists.

When so many people fall into one or more groups who are considered out of the mainstream, even if only slightly one has to wonder who is left in that mainstream.

But I digress.

People who aren’t from Texas, who have never lived here often have strange stereotypes of what Texas is like. While those stereotype are true they aren’t the only thing one finds as there is also a Texas of Willie Nelson, James McMurtry, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Marcia Ball.

We have Austin with the city slogan, “Keep Austin Weird”

This week we lost one of our Austin Eccentrics. A mentally-ill homeless man who outrageously cross dressed in a manner that has been described as “Gender Fuck”. Leslie Cochran passed away and Austin’s Sixth Street is a little less weird.

Cochran recently had been admitted to St. David’s South Austin Medical Center after he was found unconscious in a South Austin parking lot. Cochran died “peacefully and comfortably” among family and friends, said Valerie Romness, a longtime friend.

Like Austin’s famed bats, Cochran was initially regarded as something of a nuisance when he arrived in the mid-1990s. Stories tell of a North Austin supermarket worker trying to shoo Cochran out of the store parking lot with a power washer. Soon enough, Cochran was downtown.

Usually dressed in ankle-snapping ladies’ heels and a thong, Cochran was for more than a decade a fixture in Austin, particularly in the Sixth Street entertainment district. He eventually ascended to the highest rank of celebrity, joining the few known by but one name: Leslie.

Friends said he was funny, intelligent and charming. They also described him as an alcoholic, stubborn and unreliable — qualities that often landed him in jail. And since a 2009 head injury, he had been in undeniable decline.

Cochran lent a whimsical demeanor to the serious problem of homelessness and relied on the kindness of strangers and friends. But he was no freeloader. He did occasional odd jobs for local businesses and appeared in a commercial for Pinky’s Pagers that aired locally during the 2001 Super Bowl. His runs for public office include a race against former Mayor Kirk Watson, now a state senator, who joked at the time, “My fear is that this will not be an issue-oriented campaign but (about) who has the best legs, and then I know I’m a dead man.”

Aside from the thought that there is absolutely no reason why anyone in this rich nation should not have a place to live, food and medical care, we lose something when we lose the strange people who absolutely fail to conform to our consumerbot plastic fantastic world.

We lose a little bit of our soul when we no longer see people who are really harmlessly going about being mad, who make no attempt to conform.

Iraqi Militants Stone 14 Emo Kids to Death

American emo kids who think they have it rough should take note of this storyout of Iraq: at least 14 young people have been stoned to death over the past three weeks, apparently for wearing “emo” clothes and haircuts.

It all started last month when Iraq’s interior ministry declared “emo” to be “Satanism,” and demanded that a community police force end the trend for good. In response, militants have been circulating leaflets with the names of emo kids in danger of being killed.

“We strongly warn you, to all the obscene males and females, if you will not leave this filthy work within four days the punishment of God will descend upon you at the hand of the Mujahideen,” the leaflet said.

Another leaflet in Sadr City bore 20 names. “We are the Brigades of Anger. We warn you, if you do not get back to sanity and the right path, you will be killed,” it said.

And sadly, they’re not all talk. So far 14 youths have been brought to the hospital with fatal injuries from rocks and bricks, while 6 others were wounded as a “warning.” But there is no official confirmation that these deaths are linked to the victims’ emo style, in part because hospital sources “were not authorized to speak to the media.”

Yesterday was International Women’s Day, or as Republican’s know it better as “unnecessary homage to attention-seeking sluts” Day. Radio host, Rush Limbaugh, seems to be monopolizing the ire of females these days now that less well-known misogynists are operating under the radar. Wisconsin Republican state Senator, Glenn Grothman, for example.

Senator Glenn Grothman (R-WI) already made headlines regarding a controversial bill that purports single parents to be potential child abusers, appears to be continuing his role of not knowing remotely anything about women after spouting some pretty nonsensical things that would make Mel Gibson blush.

During an interview with Fox News’ Alan Colmes, Grothman continued to harangue women by claiming that they ‘choose’ to have children out-of-wedlock and that our culture appears to “encourage such a lifestyle.”

“I think a lot of women are adopting the single motherhood lifestyle because the government creates a situation in which it is almost preferred, ” said Grothman. (Source: Huffington Post)

Grothman: There’s been a huge change over the last 30 years and a lot of that change has been the choice of the women. There’s a reason why in the 50s and the 60s you had less than ten percent of the births illegitimate, and now we’re over 40 percent. It’s not that there weren’t abusive men in the 40s or there was a problem with child support. It is the popular culture, led by the social service professions, who are saying…

Pat Robertsontoday told a conflicted woman that her lesbian sister is “evil,” and therefore she may not attend her sister’s wedding — to do so would be blessing an ungodly union. “The Bible is very clear about homosexuality,” Robertson tells her, adding that if this means the end of her relationship with her sister, “tough luck.” Because, apparently, family comes first — unless they’re gay.

That Pat Robertson thinks he has any say in the matter is almost as bad as this woman who actually cannot decide if she should support her sister in a loving union.

Brian Tashman at Right Wing Watch, who bring us so many of these unbelievably gross religious atrocities, offers the video and Robertson’s response: